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Even if you're starting from Chengdu, riding to Lhasa is hard. Hard and dangerous and a really really bad idea if you don't know what you're doing. People die every year on the 318 because they weren't brave enough to accept failure and give up the dream of Riding to Lhasa that is somehow The Thing to Do when you're Chinese and you announce you're going to go on a Majorly Impressive Bike Tour.

I will never ride my bike to Lhasa. Forgetting the little things like my unfortunate habit at altitude of turning blue while slurring my speech¹, my nationality means that I'm not allowed to ride my bike to Tibet. 

It's too dangerous.

Even if a licensed travel company like Bike China Adventures (which holy heck, I googled and despite my not having heard anything from them in over 10 years, seem to still be going strong) were to organize a tour with all the requisite things required for foreign tourists to legally enter Tibet, it's still too dangerous. 

We might get hurt. 

Foreigners getting hurt is a bad thing.

Chinese people are allowed to bike into Tibet. As their lives or preventable deaths from exposure, altitude sickness, and exercise based malnutrition² aren't important enough to make the international news, they are allowed to put themselves into danger.

Which is why, people like Lucky—a rider with cerebal palsy who was just featured in the Beijinger—piss me off. He's trying to raise a heaping big substantial amount of money that will easily be 4× what I spend on this summer's Tour so he can ride to Lhasa from Chengdu in the company of a support vehicle and a videographer³.

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I mean good on him for realizing that the 318 is not a safe place to ride for people even in prime physical condition and good on him for realizing the importance of having options, but if your ride needs a chase vehicle and a videographer to document that you are an Awesome Person who is Surviving An Amazing Challenge, maybe you ought to be considering a challenge that doesn't have the actual risk of actual death?

Or maybe I'm just pissy that, other than grinding my way through 22 minutes of subtitles today, the only thing I did that's related to my about-to-start Tour is go grocery shopping for my breakfast supplies⁴.

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¹ Last year a fan discovered a video of me on Youku uploaded by the hospital in Gansu that saved me during my 2012 episode of combined altitude sickness and asthma. When it was shared with me, it still had less than 20 views. No idea what search terms caused it to somehow pop up.

² The guy in the lead picture was living off of instant noodles. I know this because he declined to split a meal with me as half the cost of eating in a restaurant was more than his day's budget.

³ Neither the article nor the poster say anything about Cerebral Palsy based charities.

 ⁴ Instant oatmeal, raisins, dried cranberries, almond powder, lard, sesame oil, and sweetened condensed milk.